


wrongs gone right

by cleardishwashers



Category: Ocean's Eleven Trilogy (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Breaking and Entering, Gen, grossly inaccurate british slang, tess/isabel if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-14 12:08:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28920324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cleardishwashers/pseuds/cleardishwashers
Summary: When she’s on her third trip to the museum that week, casing the security system and examining the paintings and looking for any sort of weakness regarding the guards, she spots a familiar head of dark hair.He’s been there every day that she has, and he wears a suit every time. (Not an art student.) He takes a different, equally methodical route through the museum every time. (Not a frequent patron.) And every single time, he gets right up close and personal to the paintings. (Likely a thief, and likely a bad one.)This is not ideal.aka an au where tess and isabel are thieves, the 11 are art students, and chaos ensues
Relationships: Danny Ocean & Tess Ocean, Isabel Lahiri & Danny Ocean, Isabel Lahiri & Rusty Ryan, Isabel Lahiri & Tess Ocean, Tess Ocean & Rusty Ryan
Comments: 6
Kudos: 10





	wrongs gone right

**Author's Note:**

  * For [suibian_distance](https://archiveofourown.org/users/suibian_distance/gifts), [ShadyDragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadyDragon/gifts).



> thanks sean and o11 tumblr for listening to me rant and thanks fatima for being an og :)

When Tess was growing up, the daughter of a politician and a socialite, her mother had made sure that she always knew the names of every person in the room, janitors and senators alike. It didn’t matter if she’d never met them before— if she couldn’t name them, she had to go up, shake hands, and introduce herself, and before she knew it she was scanning the dining halls and ballrooms and mentally assessing every single person in them. _It’s only polite,_ her mother had said. The part where Tess would grow up to schmooze them out of their money was left unspoken.

She thinks that her mother would probably faint if she knew that Tess was using the whole _situational awareness_ thing for the sole purpose of being a better thief.

But it doesn’t matter, because the skill is buried in her head like a cicada in its seven-year sleep. And when she’s on her third trip to the museum that week, casing the security system and examining the paintings and looking for any sort of weakness regarding the guards, she spots a familiar head of dark hair.

He’s been there every day that she has, and he wears a suit every time. (Not an art student.) He takes a different, equally methodical route through the museum every time. (Not a frequent patron.) And every single time, he gets right up close and personal to the paintings. (Likely a thief, and likely a bad one.)

This is not ideal. Tess has been planning this heist for _weeks—_ it’s a museum in the middle of New York City, and every single aspect is going to be a logistical nightmare. Now there’s a spanner in the works. If the man tries to hit the museum before her and fails, the museum will upgrade security. If he succeeds without leaving a forgery, the museum might even shut down to upgrade. If he _does_ use forgery, then she might unwittingly steal a canvas from Michaels instead of a Michaelangelo. If he tries to hit it _after_ her and fails, then they’ll review the tapes and possibly find _her_ forgeries, and if he succeeds and takes a switched painting, then she’ll have a shitty criminal on her tail, and in her experience, the shitty ones are the most dangerous—

Her phone buzzes in her pocket, and she nearly jumps out of her skin. It’s just a text. _Calm down,_ she tells herself, fishing the phone out.

_Isabel: Are you done_

_Isabel: Im hungry_

_Isabel: Im not going to eat that disgusting pizza slice in the fridge please come back and cook_

Tess smiles, some of the tension easing from her shoulders. Isabel’s a good friend, and a great partner. She’ll know what to do.

…

“Shoot him.”

“Isabel!” Tess exclaims reproachfully, fork paused in midair. “I’m not going to—”

“I didn’t say _kill_ him. I said shoot him. Possibly in the foot.” Isabel raises her eyebrows, as if to say _Good solution, eh?_ and brings a forkful of mac and cheese to her mouth.

“That’s— _no!_ I’m not even a hundred percent certain that he _is_ a thief, and even if he _was,_ I wouldn’t _shoot him.”_

“Okay, then here’s what you do. You stalk him. Find out if he’s a thief. And then _I’ll_ shoot him.” Tess gives her a Look. “What? I’ve got as much skin in my teeth as you do.”

“Skin in the game,” Tess corrects, wincing at the mental image. “And I’ll follow him. But under no circumstances are you to shoot him.” She gets up, taking her plate to the small apartment’s even smaller kitchen (even for an excellent forger, New York is expensive). Tess can practically hear Isabel muttering in French as she washes her hands. “I mean it, Isabel!”

“Fine!” comes Isabel’s response. “But if he fucks up this job for us, I’m shooting him in the stomach!”

…

She’s completed all of the necessary recon, so when she returns to the street the museum is on, she loiters in the coffee shop across the street instead of going in. It’s a shame, because there was one Matisse in there that she really liked, but there’s no reason to let herself be seen there any more than necessary. She orders a cappuccino and a scone, and settles in with a book.

Ten minutes in, she sees the dark-haired man enter the museum. Perfect.

But the best-laid plans must go awry, and two hours later, she’s done with her book and he _still_ hasn’t emerged. She thumbs to the beginning and starts again, and whispers into her earpiece, “Still no sign of him.”

 _“Did you miss him?”_ Isabel asks. _“It’s a possibility.”_

“It’s three PM on a Wednesday,” Tess mutters. “If I missed him in the stream of, like, ten people going in and out, you might as well just shoot _me.”_

Isabel _tsk_ s. _“Ah, don’t be so maudlin. It’s Manhattan, there’s people everywhere. You get a pass.”_

“Well, I didn’t miss him,” Tess says under her breath. Call her stubborn, but she’s damn good at her job.

And then he walks out, and the vindication she feels is so strong that she nearly fumbles her third coffee. “I have eyes on him,” she reports, gathering her things and heading for the door. “I’m tailing him now.”

…

He takes the train to Jackson Heights, all the way up in Queens. Tess— well, she doesn’t _hate_ Queens, it’s just… Manhattan is better, with the slick veneers coating everything in sight. Everybody who lives there is a mark, and everybody else is just trying to get by. Also, she really hates the steps going down from the elevated tracks this far uptown.

But she perseveres, pushing her way through the throng and never taking her eyes off the dark-haired man. She mixes in with a tour group from Wisconsin— they’re all sufficiently white for her to get lost in the crowd, and she’s got just enough of a ‘country look’ (her ex’s words, not hers) to pass by. Her fanny pack and matching jogging outfit (Isabel might make fun, but it’s _practical,_ dammit) certainly help her blend.

Eventually the man turns, his route taking him towards an old apartment building. The facade is well-kept, but it’s got the style of something built in the 50s and not quite brought up to par. It’s stately, though, and as the man walks into the lobby and greets the doorman, Tess can see the cant of his shoulders relax from a poised indifference to something comforted. He lives here, then, or at least has a home here.

Tess relays the address to Isabel, waits two minutes, and then walks in. “Hi!” she says to the doorman, plastering on a cheery smile. “Hi, I saw a guy walk in here a few minutes ago— uh, he dropped something, and, uh… well, I’d just like to see it returned to him, what’s his apartment number?”

“Sorry, do you know him?” the man asks, raising one bushy blonde eyebrow.

“No, no, I— uh, I just saw him on the street, actually, but the package looked… well. Sensitive. If you get the gist,” she says, coughing and dropping her eyes. She can hear Isabel cackling through the earpiece. “And, uh… I’d just— yeah, I’d just like to drop it off— maybe ask why in the heck he’s carrying a—”

“307!” the man exclaims, cutting her off. “Yeah, he lives in 307, just— yeah. Uh. Yeah. Head on up.”

“Thanks so much!” Tess chirps, bounding over to the elevator. Once she’s safely out of the doorman’s sight, she says a quick “It worked, didn’t it?” to Isabel, and presses the button for the third floor.

She drops a genitalia-shaped, cardboard-wrapped package outside 307, just in case the doorman is watching (it actually contains very small, very precariously-stacked boxes of candy) and heads back down, thanking the doorman one more time. Then she climbs up the fire escape on the side of the building, tugs on a pair of gloves, and cracks open the window of apartment 307.

She can’t hear anything, so she pops her head up and peers into the living room. It’s _massive._ It has an easily fifteen-foot ceiling— somebody’s obviously hollowed out the floor above, and they’ve left some of the support beams in place. Various huge glass mobiles dangle from the beams as well as the ceiling, and there are three ladders scattered around. A small kitchen is tucked between the exterior wall and the wall opposing her vantage point, which has a hallway branching off it and a long table stuffed into its other corner. Dark wood cabinets line the windowless wall on her right, reaching high enough to merit a comparison to the library from _Beauty and the Beast._ “I’m entering now,” Tess tells Isabel. She pulls on a ski mask— Isabel has already wiped the lobby footage, but if the man has individual cameras in his apartment then that’s a different story— slides the window open all the way, and clambers in. “He’s got a lot of art hanging around. Forgery specialist, I’m guessing.” She makes her way around the room, taking everything in. Quietly, she opens one of the cabinets. It's full of paint, high-quality stuff at that. Her forger theory is looking stronger and stronger. However, she doesn’t recognize much of the art hanging on the walls. Maybe this guy moves in the smaller circles. The art’s good, but—

“Danny, I swear to _God_ if you’ve drunk the last of the coffee then I’m divorcing you,” calls an unfamiliar, bleary voice from down the hallway. Tess’s eyes go wide. The window’s still open, but it’s too far.

She’s right next to one of the ladders.

She scrambles up the rungs, graceless in a way that would truly disgust her mother, and throws herself onto a beam. It’s three feet wide, meaning she can’t be seen from directly below— useful, if all that the tired man is going to do is go to the kitchen— but if he crosses to the other side of the room and looks up, she’ll have a problem. She presses her back into the cool metal, and she does her best to quiet her breathing. _“Tess?”_ comes Isabel’s concerned voice. _“Tess, are you okay?”_

“Shh,” is all Tess dares to say.

A second voice, who must be the aforementioned Danny, pierces the quiet— “Hey, you can’t stay up till—”

“It was only five—”

“Still only two hours of sleep—”

Tess thinks she must be having a stroke. They’re not actually _talking,_ are they? The first voice cuts across again. “But you were the one who made me take the morning class. _‘Oh, Rusty, we’ll have the room to ourselves. Oh, Rusty, think of the light.’”_

“I stand by that. The light is great. Your irrational sleep schedule is not.”

The first voice— Rusty, apparently— snorts. “It _would_ be if we weren’t schlepping to Manhattan at—”

“Hey, you tell Reuben—”

“Y’know, I think he hasn’t looked up what rent’s supposed to be since the 80s?”

“And you’re complaining?”

“Absolutely not.”

“There’s some cold brew in the fridge, by the way.”

Rusty lets out a moan that Tess could only describe as pornographic. “You’re my savior.”

“Don’t I know it,” Danny replies wryly.

Rusty snorts. A few moments later, Tess hears the sound of someone padding across the floor. She chances a look over the edge of the beam— it’s not the dark-haired man. This one is blonde, dressed in a T-shirt that would be too big if the hem hadn’t been chopped off (leaving it both too wide and too short) and a pair of very short, very red shorts that read _TRAITOR TO THE CAUSE_ in all-white font. He’s about the same height and build as the other man, and Tess wonders where the hell he got such ill-fitting clothes from.

“Danny, did you leave the window—”

Tess’s stomach drops. Danny calls, “No, must’ve been Basher. Maybe he burned something.”

 _“Maybe.”_ Rusty chuckles. And then Tess hears the sound of socked feet crossing the room.

She squeezes her eyes shut. _Please don’t look up. Please don’t look up. Please don’t look—_

Glass shatters, and her eyes fly open. She stares directly at Rusty, whose hand is open and face is affectedly neutral. A river of cold brew is spreading at his feet. “Rusty?” Danny calls. “Are you okay?”

“Are you here to rob us?” Rusty asks her, with a tone far too controlled for someone who has an intruder in their house. “Because we’re art students. We don’t really have that much money.”

 _“Tess, what’s happening?”_ Isabel whispers.

 _Art students._ The goddamn suit threw her off. “I’m not here to rob you,” Tess says. “I… thought this was my apartment?”

For a thief, she’s awfully bad at coming up with lies on the spot. Preplanned alibis are much more her thing.

“She’s not here to rob us, apparently, even though she’s wearing a ski mask,” Rusty says, looking past Tess at the hallway. Tess looks over the other side of the beam, to where the dark-haired man— Danny, presumably— is standing with a steel baseball bat. “Are you here to kill us?” he asks Tess.

“That depends on whether you believe my apartment story.” Tess lets out a nervous titter, her heart still hammering against her chest. Danny blanches, and she realizes that probably wasn’t the best thing to say.

_“Tess, explain what the hell is going on—”_

“I’m not here to hurt you,” Tess says, sitting up slowly and raising her palms. The goodwill is reciprocated by Danny, who lowers his bat, and it has the added benefit of calming her down a teeny bit. “I’m just— uh. Well, I thought you were planning to rob a museum.”

_“Tess!”_

“What?” Rusty frowns.

“So you broke into my _house?”_ Danny asks. “Instead of… I dunno, calling the police?”

Tess turns her head back to Rusty just in time to see his eyes go wide. “Were _you_ going to rob a museum?” he asks.

“How was that the—”

“Any rational person would—”

“Would _you?”_

“Literally two minutes ago you called me—”

“No, I called your sleeping schedule—”

_“Tess, seriously, I’m going to come there—”_

“No!” Tess hisses. Both men turn to her. “Sorry, sorry,” she tells them, motioning at her earpiece. _God, how’d you mess up_ this _bad?_ “Isabel, it’s fine, I think— are either of you gonna call the police on me? Please don’t do that. Y’know what? I’m just gonna go. Bye!” she says, and then she rolls off the beam, drops onto the floor, and exits out the window.

It’s fine. It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine.

She takes off the ski mask as she jumps down the final flight of stairs, stuffing it into her handbag. Her cheeks are burning. She strides two blocks down, explaining the situation to Isabel as she walks. When she no longer wants to die of shame, she hails a cab. "Well, at least you know the museum plans are unthreatened," Isabel says, her voice colored by that familiar blend of comfort and practicality.

"Unless NYPD picks me up tomorrow," Tess mutters. God, what a colossal waste of time.

…

Tess watches the feed she’s set up to monitor apartment 307 nearly sixteen hours a day. She has taps on every phone in the place, a backdoor into their internet data, and color-coded schedules telling her where each one of them should be at any given time. She doesn’t mean to (or particularly want to) _stalk_ them, but Isabel has insisted on a two-week surveillance period to make sure nobody contacts the police. And after a week and a half of the gross violation of their privacy, she can confidently say that this could be made into one of those reality shows Isabel’s always bingeing.

There are apparently eight residents of the apartment, all of them art students at the city's various colleges. Tess had been very, very confused by this at first, until Isabel had looked up the renovation history and found that in the eighties, a man named Reuben Tishkoff had converted half the third and fourth floor into one huge, eight-bedroom, eight-bathroom, two-living-room mega-apartment. Tess isn’t completely sure she wants to know _why,_ but at least there’s an explanation for how more and more men keep emerging from the hall. The living room seems to be a shared studio, and apparently one of the torn-out kitchens from what should be apartment 305 has been replaced with a kiln. _Art students,_ Tess thinks, looking over the file she has on them. _What a world._

There’s obviously Danny and Rusty, and through some Googling, she finds out their specializations. Danny— Daniel Ocean, according to the NYU gallery site— is a semi-abstract artist in his senior year, the mind behind all the mobiles in the living room. Rusty— Robert Ryan, apparently, which makes Isabel stifle a giggle— is a sculptor in his junior year. They are both most likely caffeine addicts, and the frequency at which they consume the beverage makes Tess re-evaluate her own caffeine habit.

Danny has a sister, apparently, Deborah— two years younger than him, and another talented abstract artist, although she does more painting than he does. She stops by once, and makes Yen throw paint-filled water balloons at a canvas with his feet.

Yen— and no matter how hard Tess tries, she can’t find a last name— is a five-two dance/music double major who has apparently toured with the New York Philharmonic despite being in his sophomore year of college. He speaks in rapid-fire Mandarin and wears an enormous San Francisco Zoo T-shirt over a catsuit ninety percent of the time. Tess wonders how the hell he manages to keep the catsuit sweat-free, and wonders if he’d be amenable to being recruited by thieves.

There’s also a pair of brothers— twins, actually, but Tess wouldn’t know it by looking at them— in their junior year named Turk and Virgil Malloy, and they’re referred to by the rest of the apartment as ‘the Mormons.” Turk is a 2-D art major, Virgil is a sculptor, neither drink coffee, but both tried to out-tequila each other when the sixth member of the apartment, Frank, bet them twenty bucks they couldn’t beat Yen. (They both lost, but Yen fell off a beam twenty minutes later and nearly broke Frank’s back.)

Frank Catton is both Tess and Isabel’s favorite. He’s a fourth-year muralist, and he goes on very well-researched tangents about various subjects, including the history of oil painting— he briefly touches on the mechanisms of paint cracking, and Tess hurriedly alters the forgery she’d prepped for the museum job. He and Livingston constantly have some bet or another going, and it’s become tradition in Tess and Isabel’s apartment to bet on what they’re betting on.

Livingston Dell is one of the two non-art majors that Tess has seen in the apartment. He’s very twitchy, very sweaty, and works in cybersecurity. Tess makes a mental note to do a _really_ good job covering her tracks when she’s taking them off surveillance.

The last resident of the apartment is a third-year engineering major named Eugene Tarr, except Tess has only heard the others refer to him as Basher. She wonders why the others call him a pyromaniac, until one day the robot he’s working on explodes and burns Danny’s bare feet. He has a penchant for clothes even more outrageous than Rusty’s (Tess saw the latter leave the apartment in a bedazzled jacket, once), and he speaks in the most unintelligible Cockney accent she’s ever heard.

Then there’s Saul and Reuben, neither of whom live there. She knows Reuben is their landlord, but she’s not quite sure how Saul fits into the picture— an uncle, maybe? Whoever he is, he is continually found in the other living room (and Tess is _so_ glad that she’d broken into apartment 307 instead of what used to be 303) either reading or kvetching, popping Tums all day long. Reuben seems to be where both Rusty and Basher have inherited their fashion senses from— he’s stopped by the apartment twice in the past twelve days, the first time draped in a faux-fur, leopard-print jacket that must be an inch thick (in _March)_ and the second wearing head-to-toe pink. Including his jaunty fedora.

Finally, there’s Linus, a baby-faced freshman and a traditional painter who apparently comes from a line of modern art royalty. He seems to be perpetually toeing the line between _nervous_ and _ready to kill someone,_ probably not helped by the fact that everyone else in the apartment calls him _kid._ But he comes back every few days, so Tess isn’t too concerned for his mental state.

She doesn’t think any of them are a threat. For Pete’s sake, when Danny had told the apartment members (plus Linus) all at Dinner for Brunch (apparently a thing in their apartment, which Tess thinks Isabel might petition to adopt) about the details of Tess’s break-in, they’d managed to turn it into a discussion about who should’ve replaced the cold brew.

(Rusty—who had already bought a new bottle, negating the whole point— Livingston, and the Malloys said Danny, since he’d been the last one to have a full cup. Danny, Frank, Basher, and Yen said Rusty, since he should’ve kept a hold on the glass no matter how exigent the circumstances. Linus had exclaimed, _“Seriously? Are you— someone broke into your house, and you’re— what?!”_ Tess hates that she knows this, and she hates even more that she and Isabel know enough to be on opposite sides.) (She says it should’ve been Danny. Isabel says Rusty.)

She keeps the monitors going, though, because it’s best to be cautious. Also, she’s pretty sure that Frank and Livingston have a bet on when Danny and Rusty are going to get together, and if she can make Isabel think it’s on something else, then she can make _so_ much money. She only has access to the street cameras and an audio bug that Isabel planted on the underside of the two remaining front doors, but they don’t have curtains in either living room, and she can read lips pretty well. Currently, Frank is saying something under his breath to Livingston: _“That project they’re working together on? C’mon, you know last time they worked together they almost got it on right up against the table.”_

Livingston purses his lips. _“You’re not considering Linus. He's got— well, you know his tendency to, uh. Barge in.”_

 _“Yeah, I don’t know whether to be grateful he went to the living room before me that day or annoyed. 'Cause on the one hand, that would've scarred me for life, but on the other, I would’ve made_ bank.”

_“Ah, my friend, you have to consider the whole—”_

The front door bangs open, the _whoosh_ of air temporarily drowning out what little audio Tess can get. Basher storms in and slams the door again. _“That wanker stole my—”_ well, she assumes it’s one of his projects, but it truly is hard to understand him sometimes— _“and now he’s gonna patent it! Fuckin’ bunch of—”_ and now it’s just that peculiar rhyming slang. _“Fuck!”_

 _“Hey, slow down,”_ Frank says. _“Whatcha mean, he stole it?”_

“What’s going on?” Isabel asks, walking up to Tess with a bowl of popcorn in her hands. “Who stole what?”

Tess nods at the screen as Basher continues. _“I mean my fuckin’ wankstain of an advisor! Took the designs and told me they wouldn’t work, next thing I know I see ‘im chattin’ up the R &D director of ArcTech in the canteen with my fuckin' blueprints!” _

_“Are you sure they were yours?”_ Livingston asks.

_“Course I’m fuckin’ sure, I spent three months on the bastards, didn’ I? Fuck, I don’ even have backups!”_

Frank raises a placating hand. _“Look, Basher— we’ll get it back, man. You wanna go solder something?”_

Even on the grainy street camera, Tess can see the gleam in Basher’s eye. _“Nope. I’m gonna go burn that painting that dear ol’ Debs slashed up.”_

He strides off down the hall, and Tess looks over her shoulder at Isabel. “Pity,” she remarks. And the thing is? She’s genuinely upset on his behalf.

She _really_ needs to stop watching this stuff.

…

Tess walks into the kitchen to find Isabel already holding out a mug of coffee. “You’re a lifesaver,” she tells her, accepting it and inhaling deeply. “Alright, tomorrow’s the day. You ready?”

“Yes. Are you?” Isabel asks.

“As I’ll ever be. How’s security looking?”

“Cameras are officially in place. The forgery?”

“Completed and aged.”

“Ooh, this is going to be fantastic,” Isabel says, grinning. “We’re going to be so—”

A knock at the door cuts her off, as if someone out there is saying _Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched._ Tess isn’t superstitious, but she can’t help but wonder if it’s a sign. Isabel grins. “Ah, that’ll be the pizza.”

“You ordered pizza at eight in the morning?” Tess asks.

Isabel shrugs. “I am a mere mortal. I experience cravings, too.”

Tess shakes her head, laughing, and walks over to the front door. “Y’know, when I started working with you—”

She cuts herself off abruptly, because on the other side of the door is _not_ a deliveryman.

Instead, it’s Daniel Ocean, who says, “You’re the lady who broke into my house, right?”

“Tess?” Isabel calls. “What’s going on?”

“Uh,” Tess replies. Should she do an accent? Disguise her voice? _What good would that do?_ she asks herself. She refocuses on Danny. “Sorry, what?”

“Yeah, you definitely are. Look, are you— this sounds very unconventional, but could my friends and I hire you to steal some blueprints? Is that your kind of work?”

Isabel comes to stand next to Tess, whose brain is still short-circuiting. “I’m sorry, but are you implying that this woman is a criminal?” Isabel asks.

“Shit, does she— do you not know, ma’am? Uh—”

“I’m four years older than you!” Isabel exclaims. “What in the world do you mean, _ma’am?”_

Danny genuinely looks like his soul is leaving his body. “I’m so sorry, it’s kind of just… a natural reaction to call people who live with less than three roommates— wait, how do you know how old I am?”

“She’s a professor of… ageing,” Tess interjects, cursing the day they'd spent playing _Guess Who_ with the files they'd amassed. “She basically guesses people’s ages for a living.”

“Twenty-six is kind of young for a professor, isn’t it?” Danny asks, squinting. “I’m getting the feeling that this was the person in your earpiece when you _broke into my apartment.”_

Tess looks at Isabel. Isabel looks at Tess. “Ugh,” Tess says. “Fine. Come in.”

She barely manages to shut down the video feed on the monitors while Isabel stalls him in the kitchen, and then suddenly everyone’s sitting down in the living room with a cup of coffee as if the whole meeting technically isn’t a crime. “How’d you know where I live?” Tess asks, narrowing her eyes. She doesn’t necessarily feel un _safe—_ there’s a gun in every room and she’s known how to shoot since she was eight— but she’s definitely uneasy.

“Uh, one of my roommates was messing with our wifi and found someone at this IP address piggybacking off it, and we were all pretty sure that you, being a criminal, were behind it. Seeing as you broke into our house. And then threatened us.”

“Yeah, again, that was— truly, my bad,” says Tess. Isabel is looking at her like she’s gone insane. She’s not quite sure that she hasn’t. “I hope you understand. And the stalking you— I’m really sorry, it’s just that we can’t take many chances in this business.”

“Are you referring to the internet-stalking, or is there something else I should know about?” Danny asks.

Tess and Isabel look at each other again.

“I’ll take that as a _yes._ Look, I get it, but—”

“Is this some kind of internalized misogyny thing?” Isabel interrupts. “Do you think that, because we’re women, we aren’t as likely to hurt you?”

“Isabel!” Tess hisses. Actually, now that she thinks about it, it’s a relevant question.

“No! No, nothing like that!” Danny yelps. “No, I actually, uh… my sister’s girlfriend, she’s some kind of criminal? She hasn’t told me what exactly she… _does._ But she kind of… talked us through why you’d do what you did. So unless you’re going to murder me, I gotta be honest, I can’t really bring myself to be that upset. It’s understandable.”

“And we’d like to keep it that way,” Tess says, mentally kicking herself for somehow not catching Danny and Lou’s conversation in her surveillance net. This is _weird,_ this whole damned situation, but she supposes her life kind of invites it. “What’s your sister’s girlfriend’s name, by the way? I might know her.”

“Lou Miller?” Danny says. “Again, I’m not exactly sure what she does, but—”

“Oh, we know her!” Isabel exclaims. “Spiky hair, correct?”

“Very,” Danny affirms.

“Ah! Yes, your sister has good taste.”

“If we could— there was a mention of a job?” Tess interjects, trying to steer the conversation in a productive direction. “And since we’re on the topic, why can’t you just ask Lou?”

“One, she thinks that one of my roommates— you met him, actually, the blonde guy? Yeah, she thinks he stole a bottle of her hair pomade, or some shit,” he says. Tess eyes his hair thoughtfully— there’s no way he doesn’t know what pomade is, given the artful sculpting of even the most wayward strands. “Two, she’s in Vegas right now, and Bash needs them by the end of the week, ‘cause he doesn’t have, like, even a copy of his notes.”

Tess blinks. “End of the _week?”_

“Yeah, that’s when some big conference happens.”

“And where are these blueprints being kept?”

“In a safe in his advisor’s apartment.”

“In his apartment,” Isabel says dully. “Which means we have to bread in with no idea what kind of safe we’ll find.”

“I know it’s not ideal, but she—” Danny nods at Tess— _“did_ kind of do the exact same thing to me.”

“Two jobs in a week,” Tess says. _“What_ could go wrong.”

…

A lot, apparently. The museum job goes off without a hitch, but it must’ve used up the Tess and Isabel Good Luck Fund, because when they’re replacing the blueprints in the safe with a slightly altered version…

  1. Isabel steps directly on a Roomba (which thankfully doesn’t break) on her way in through the window and twists her ankle as she falls to the floor.
  2. The safe turns out to be a Glen-Reeder X2700— impossible to crack without a very, very specialized screwdriver-slash-crowbar, which Tess hadn’t brought with her.
  3. While Isabel is trying not to swear in pain and Tess is trying to listen to the click of the safe dial through her stethoscope, a key turns in the front door's lock.



Tess is going to _kill_ Danny.

She motions at Isabel to hide under the bed. They both roll under, Isabel’s arm pressing into Tess’s side. Tess _inhales, exhales, inhales, exhales,_ until she can’t hear her pulse in her ears in her ears anymore. She watches as a pair of loafer-clad feet walk into the bedroom and come to stand in front of the safe. She hears the click of the dial, the creak of the door swinging open, the whisper of paper being withdrawn. The feet draw closer, until they’re six inches away from Tess’s face. She breathes as slowly as she possibly can. He unlatches something— briefcase, possibly— puts the papers in, and then latches it again.

And then the front door shuts behind him, and he’s gone.

Tess lets out an enormous exhale and rolls out from under the bed as Isabel starts up a stream of French cursing. Tess is inclined to join her. “We lost the blueprints,” she says, disbelieving.

 _“Putain,”_ Isabel hisses.

Tess shakes her head. “No. Nope. We’re gonna get them back. Sarasota Swap, that should work, right?”

 _“How,”_ Isabel asks, still through gritted teeth.

“Is your ankle—”

“Undoubtedly not. Just— _God,_ just tell me how we’re going to pull this off.”

Concern gnaws at Tess. “We should probably get you to a—”

“If you say hospital I’ll kill you.”

“But if you’re really—”

“Therese!” Isabel snaps. “Tell me about the fucking Sarasota Swap!”

“Okay! Okay, okay! Uh, what we’re gonna do is— _shit,_ you’re in no shape to walk, are you?” The silence only confirms it. “Shit. Okay. Well, uh…” An idea flashes to the front of her mind, bright and desperate. Tess snatches her phone out of her pocket and sends out a text.

_ME: Which one of you is in class righ tnow_

_ME: Urgent_

_DANIEL OCEAN: Rus and I are in studio whats up_

_ME: I’m going to call you_

“Isabel, I have to leave.”

“Go,” Isabel replies. “Good luck.”

…

The Sarasota Swap is actually fairly easy. The only difficulty is buying a briefcase in such a short amount of time.

Tess follows the advisor to the subway and sends a picture of his briefcase to Danny. At the next stop, Danny gets on, newly-purchased lookalike briefcase in hand. Tess slips it from his fingers, and when the train inevitably judders, she stumbles into the advisor. “Oh, I’m so sorry!” she exclaims, bending down to pick up his briefcase instead of her own.

“Don’t worry about it,” replies the advisor, giving her a grin that he must think is charming. From there, it’s easy to crack the latches open, take the blueprints out, and put the fake papers in; when the car stops at the next station, Danny bumps into the advisor and makes him drop the lookalike. “Hey!” the advisor snaps as he picks up the real briefcase. “Watch it!” But Danny’s already gone.

It’s almost perfect. Apart from the fact that Tess has to go back in order to take her injured friend, whom she abandoned, to the hospital. The doctor tells Isabel that it’s broken clean through, and she looks murderous. Tess feels even worse. “I’m so sorry,” she tells Isabel, as soon as the doctor is gone. “I got us into this, I shouldn’t’ve—”

“You were doing your due diligence,” Isabel replies.

“But—”

“I don’t want to hear it, Tess.” She says it fondly, but Tess still feels bad. Isabel stares at her like she knows exactly what Tess is thinking. “D’you know something? You’ll need to be my personal butler for the next six weeks, so you’ll have plenty of opportunities for penance. But right now, we are millionaires, and if you continue to feel guilty instead of celebrating this fact, I will have no choice but to take your share and flee to Bermuda.”

Tess chuckles, something warm flaring in her chest, and pushes herself up onto the exam table next to Isabel. “How much Vicodin did they give you?”

“I’m serious!” Isabel insists.

“Who’s going to wait on you hand and foot in Bermuda?”

“I’m a millionaire! I can hire ten of those!”

“Yeah, but they’ll just be doing their jobs. I’ll be doing it out of love.”

Isabel slings an arm around Tess’s shoulders, natural, and the shift settles solidly into place. “And I couldn’t trade that, no?”

“No, you couldn’t,” Tess agrees.

…

When they finally get home, they find Basher sitting outside their door.

He jumps to his feet, filled with far too much exuberance for Tess’s tired eyes to handle. “Ah! There you are! I just wanted to say, you two are really the tops, I’d’ve been in such fucking barney rubble if you ‘adn’t lent a hand—”

“In such _what?”_ Tess asks, hand frozen on its way into her bag for the keys as her brain stumbles to process Basher’s rapid-fire, heavily-accented speech.

“Barney rubble?” He gets no response. “Trouble!”

“Oh!” Tess exclaims. “Yeah, that makes sense.”

“And you should hold off on the thanks,” Isabel says, leaning half on her crutches and half on Tess’s shoulder. “We were technically blackmailed into doing it.”

“Well, ‘s the thought that counts, innit?” Basher beams, hands in his pockets as he rocks back on his heels. “Or I s’pose it’s the action, in this case. Well, either way, I woulda been spreadin’ the ol’ weep an’ wail if you two ‘adn’t helped, so to say thanks I’d like to propose a nice dinner party!” He glances at Isabel’s massive cast. “Maybe next weekend?”

…

That’s how Tess finds herself in the massive loft for the second time, eating burgers and destroying the loft residents (plus Linus— not as much Debbie, Saul, or Reuben, who she’s beating a regular amount) at poker while drinking whiskey far too cheap for her status as a newly-minted millionaire. She somehow finds herself being added to a text chain, and at one point she’s hopping on Rusty’s shoulders and playing chicken opposite Danny and Yen while Isabel cheers, and then a very drunk Basher is proposing plans to modify Isabel’s crutches for “thiefly activities” (his words). At some point in the evening she finds herself asking Rusty, _why is Danny always wearing suits?_ and getting a barely-restrained cackle in response. Frank and Livingston are sitting on the counter betting on nothing, Yen is waving a de-powered chainsaw around with uncontained glee, Linus is trying to force water upon everyone, and Debbie has engaged Saul, Reuben, and the Malloys in a rock-paper-scissors tournament. And when Tess watches them all, she doesn’t watch to assess— she simply watches to revel in the air of companionship. It’s a good feeling.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! feel free to drop a kudos/comment or msg me at hawkswithvideocameras on tumblr!


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